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Jaguars Trade Eugene Monroe to the Ravens

The Jaguars, according to multiple sources, have traded starting left tackle Eugene Monroe to the Baltimore Ravens for draft picks. Monroe is scheduled to be a free agent after this season and thus could simply be a one year rental for the Ravens who seemed to be desperate to find help along their offensive line. Monroe was earning a base salary of $3.8 million this season so the Ravens will be responsible for $2,905,882 in both cash and cap commitments. Monroe’s bonus money will remain with the Jaguars and they will carry a dead money charge of $1, 397,500 for Monroe in 2014.

The remaining cap figure likely means that the Ravens will need to make roster moves in order to fit Monroe under their salary cap. As of Monday the Ravens only had $1.2 million in cap space. They freed up $367,059 with the release of Christian Thompson this afternoon and will free up slightly more when a roster move is made to add Monroe to the roster. I would imagine that maybe S Jeromy Miles could be in danger because his contract is not guaranteed and he would save the team $933,882 in cap room. Any player released will be paid his salary for the week. Still that will not be enough to fit Monroe.

The Ravens have walked a tight rope with their salary cap recently and have little areas for restructures as many players already have significant prorated bonuses and low base salaries comprising their cap numbers. The options would likely be restructuring the contracts of either Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, or Marshal Yanda to create the cap room. Another option would be to restructure the contract of Monroe upon executing the trade. Monroe has a voidable 2014 year which would allow the team to move prorated money from 2013 into 2014 for cap purposes. Signing Monroe long term will likely require some creative thinking on the part of the Ravens to fit him in their salary cap structure.

For the Jaguars this was basically a salary dump. Monroe no longer fit into the teams long term plans and they were most likely not going to re-sign him after the season. From their point of view they will receive immediate draft picks in 2014 plus a cap and cash savings of $2.9 million in 2013, which can be carried over to future years. At the end of the day this is probably similar to a baseball trade where you simply get whatever assets back for a player that you can.